Geography Commons^™

Assessing Impacts Of Winter-Hay Feeding On Soil And Forage Nutrient Dynamics In A Rotationally-Grazed Pasture System In Arkansas, Lawrence Gordon Berry Iv

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

More than 38 % of United States’ rural land area was used for grazing (i.e., pastureland or rangeland) ruminant animals in 2017, constituting the largest private land use group. The expansive nature of these lands means that grazing and pasture management decisions have potential to impact water quality as well as profit margins. As a result, beef producers are under increased pressure from economic and environmental standpoints to limit application of nutrients beyond those required to grow the forage needed for animal consumption. At the same time, a large amount of nutrients is recycled back to pasture systems directly from …

Carolina African Runner Peanuts: Connecting African And Alabamian Agricultural History, Abby West, Gary Padgett, Matthew D. Campbell

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

Social Studies has the potential to impact STEAM education in unrealized ways. It can have this impact by being meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active. This article examines teaching about Carolina African Runner peanuts and the history of Alabama’s agriculture. The introduction of peanuts to Alabama and the enslavement of African people cannot be removed from a lesson such as this – nor should it. It is through value-based education that social studies contributes the most to STEM and STEAM lessons. This article is significant in that it demonstrates a history lesson that is active rather than passive. This article …

Estimation Of Spatial Change In Cropland Area And Evaluation Of Irrigation Performance In Imperial Valley Using Remotely Sensed Data, Usha Poudel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Imperial Valley (IV) in the US is an extensively irrigated agricultural region, which includes multiple crops changing on an annual and semiannual basis. The valley is facing grave concerns about water management due to its semi-arid environment, water intensive crops, and limited water supply. A simple, inexpensive, and repeatable method to detect changes in cropping patterns may assist irrigation managers to understand crop diversification and associated consumptive use. In addition, a spatial assessment of existing water irrigation system performance and productivity is crucial to benchmark and improve current water management strategies. This thesis estimates the spatial pattern of change …

Strong Women Breaking Ground: Roles Of Women In Agriculture In Michigan, April L. Shirey

Masters Theses

Agriculture in Michigan is changing. While the number of farms and farmers continue to decrease, women are increasingly taking on the role of farmer instead of the “farmer’s wife”. The number of female producers increased from 8,275 to 26,059 where the number of producers in Michigan decreased from 56,014 to 47,641 from 2007 to 2017 (USDA, 2007, 2017). Women are becoming the face of farming in Michigan, yet little research examines the impacts of these shifts. In this research, I conduct semi-structured interviews with female farmers throughout lower Michigan beginning in the summer of 2020 to learn more about these …

Spatiotemporal Observations Of Water Stress In Kansas Winter Wheat And Corn From Remotely Sensed Evapotranspiration And Ndwi, Lindi Diane Oyler

Masters Theses

"Optimizing water use is a growing concern, especially in agricultural communities where water use is high. An important challenge in agricultural water optimization is knowing when and where crop water stress is occurring, particularly on large scales where in-situ measurements are no longer practical to obtain. In an effort to combat this challenge, this study utilizes remotely sensed evapotranspiration (ET) and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) to evaluate the responses of integrated satellite datasets to water-stressed conditions over fields of irrigated corn, irrigated winter wheat, and rainfed winter wheat from 2007 to 2017 in southwestern Kansas. Using two different ET …

Essays On Climate Change-Related Extreme Events, Alvin E. Harris

Dissertations

There are increasing and urgent calls for global economies to join in the fight against the impacts of climate change (World Bank, 2020). With reports such as the World Bank (2020) of climate change costing billions of dollars in losses for economies, the purpose of my dissertation is to examine the effects of climate change-related extreme events and their potential economic effects in three areas: agriculture, migration, and the labor market.

My first essay focuses on the factors that influence farmers’ perception of risk and adaptive strategies against the effects of climate change-related extreme events. I examine whether farmers’ social …

A View From Above: Alternative Perspectives On Smallholder Livelihoods And Agrobiodiversity Conservation In Northern Ecuador, Chris Hair

Dissertations

Food security and deintensification of agriculture are serious concerns in Latin America. Agriculture, especially at small-scale subsistence levels, is hard work, and comes with some economic and physical risk. Transitions from traditional multi-cropping to mono-cropping systems introduce two particular risks that are new to most smallholders: (1) the loss of agricultural diversity and (2) the potential for widespread failure when focusing on the cultivation of a single crop. This research explores how Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS), or drones, can be used for rapid inventories of crop diversity and to enhance crop management techniques on small-scale farms. In the community …

Changing Agricultural Landscapes: An Investigation Of Dragon Fruit Production In Southern Vietnam., Laura Krauser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Agricultural transition represents an essential component of land-use and land-cover change in developing countries across the world, as economic and social factors pressure agriculturalists out of traditional subsistence farming into food commodity production. Modernization has altered modes of income, land ownership, and livelihood in Southeast Asia drastically in recent years. The Bình Thuận Province of southern Vietnam experienced a particularly radical transformation with the introduction of dragon fruit cultivation, which has been profoundly encouraged by outside markets in China, Australia, and Japan. This research combines remote sensing and qualitative research to examine and characterize a changing agricultural landscape in rural …

Climate Change Adaptation In Highland Ecuador: Intersections Of Gender, Geography, And Knowledge In Farming Communities, Dinka Natali Caceres Arteaga

Latin American Studies ETDs

This dissertation uses a feminist political ecology perspective to explore the socioeconomic impacts of climate change in Ecuador, especially but not limited to the agriculture sector. It is based on the use of mixed methods that allowed the participation and validation of the local population, surpassing their role as beneficiaries to co-authors of this research.

The significance of this study relies on the position the local population holds in the fields of human geography, under a community local-planning perspective, as they attempted to collaborate in the process of adaptation to climate change by presenting analysis and calculation of an index …

Coping Strategies Of Agrarian Households, Daniel Amoak

Africa Western Collaborations Day 2020 Abstracts

No abstract provided.

Quantifying Four Decades Of Arid-Region Agricultural Development In Arequipa, Peru Using Landsat, Zachary S. Brecheisen, Nicholas Hamp-Adams, Edwin Bocardo Delgado, Martin Villalta Soto, Timothy Filley, Darrell G. Schulze

Purdue GIS Day

The Arequipa Nexus Institute for Food, Energy and the Environment (Nexus Institute) is located in Southwestern Peru, generally bounded by the city of Arequipa to the east, the Majes River to the west, the Pacific Ocean to the south, and the Andes mountains to the north. Though agriculture has been practiced in parts of this cool desert region (MAT~15°C, MAP

Chronic Kidney Disease From Non-Traditional Causes Throughout Central America, Abigail K. Watson

Senior Theses

Throughout many Central American countries, incidence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) has been on the rise. The disease mainly affects agricultural workers and differs from typical CKD. Patients in these countries often do not have preexisting conditions such as diabetes or hypertension known to be traditional causes of CKD. They also experience increased damage to the kidney tubules, rather than the glomeruli generally more heavily impacted. There has been speculation regarding the causes of CKDnT (chronic kidney disease of nontraditional causes), but no consensus has been reached. Two major hypotheses to explain the high prevalence among Central American sugarcane workers …

Sustainability Of Industrialized Agriculture, Fall/Winter 2002, Issue 5

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

Local Foods, Fall/Winter 2013, Issue 27

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Value Of Farmland: Mapping Assessor Data To Understand Land Use Change, Lyndi Perry

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Ideas developed by regional economists have potential applications within the urban planning field. One potential application is toward conserving farmland, and within this thesis this topic is examined for the study area of Utah County, Utah. Using assessor data, a land value map is created and further used to develop a regional economic model and spatial models that were analyzed for patterns of land use change.

Findings show that representing land value as continuous surface maps is a useful approach. The maps reveal that Utah County has densified as its population increased while farmland loss still occurred in agriculturally-important areas. …

The Use Of High And Medium Resolution Imagery To Detect Agricultural Land Cover In Chinese Cities: A Case Study Of Nanjing 2000 To 2015, Erik Breidinger

Masters Theses

According to McGee and Ginsburg’s desakota hypothesis, rapidly growing Asian cities differ from large Western cities in their land cover/land use (LC/LU) as they retain a significant portion of agricultural land and labor despite rapid urbanization. However, significant amounts of agricultural production within desakotas takes place in plastic greenhouses, causing a unique problem when calculating LC/LU estimates via traditional remote sensing techniques. While greenhouses appear equivalent to developed land spectrally, their purpose is entirely agricultural. This study provides an improved method of calculating greenhouse land-cover as agricultural land-use using Jiangning District in the city of Nanjing as the study area …

Local Knowledge And Climate Information: The Role Of Trust And Risk In Agricultural Decisions About Drought, Adam J. Snitker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Climate change is projected to dramatically impact agricultural production across the world. Agricultural producers must adapt to changing conditions by implementing practices and utilizing knowledge that creates resilient operations. This study explores how Montana farmers and ranchers use of different types of knowledge during periods of drought and how risk perceptions and trust influence the use of knowledge. To understand the role trust and risk in producers’ use of local knowledge and climate information, I conducted five focus groups with 34 Montana agricultural producers. Producers explained that they encounter many agriculture-related risks, including uncertain forecasts, financial losses, and adverse weather. …

Sustainable Environment: Nexus Project, Zachary S. Brecheisen, Darrell Schulze, Timothy Filley, Jino Ramson, W. Daniel Leon-Salas, Natalie Chin, Fariborz Daneshvar, Andre De Lima Moraes

Purdue GIS Day

Arequipa region is locaed in Southwestern Peru. The Arequipa Nexus Institute for food, energy, water and the environment aims to address the key challenges to a sustainable furture for the people in the region. This roundtable discusses about the sustainable water management, geosaptial analysis and environment sharing, long range sensor network solution for soil health monitoring and data management and sharing in this Nexus project.

The Drive To Commercialize: Implications Of Women Rice Farmers’ Differential Resource Access For Market-Oriented Development Intervention In Southwestern Burkina Faso, Millie Varley

Geography Honors Projects

This research questions the theory-of-change underlying market-oriented agricultural development intervention. In particular, this research interrogates divergent commercialization experiences for women, depending on their differential access to resources. The sample covers women rice farmers in five villages in southwestern Burkina Faso, of which three villages are included in a market-oriented development program. I investigate the links between three resources: women’s level of land tenure security, their access to organic fertilizer, and the distribution of time spent on fieldwork. The most significant relationship is an association between women’s land tenure security and the dietary diversity scores of their household, across all wealth …

Assessment Of Potential Changes In Crop Yields In The Central United States Under Climate Change Regimes, Neil Matthews-Pennanen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Climate change is one of the great challenges facing agriculture in the 21^st century. The goal of this study was to produce projections of crop yields for the central United States in the 2030s, 2060s, and 2090s based on the relationship between weather and yield from historical crop yields from 1980 to 2010. These projections were made across 16 states in the US, from Louisiana in the south to Minnesota in the north. They include projections for maize, soybeans, cotton, spring wheat, and winter wheat.

Simulated weather variables based on three climate scenarios were used to project future crop …

Correcting For The Inconveniences Of Cultivation: Foraging As A Food Source In Southwestern Burkina Faso, Julia Deryn Morgan

Geography Honors Projects

Malnutrition is an important public health issue in Burkina Faso where 30 % of children are underweight for their age and 92% suffer from iron deficiency. Such statistics indicate that there is a significant lack of adequate nutrition in the country. With approximately 80% of the population employed in the agricultural sector, development projects have focused on increasing agricultural production and commercializing output to ameliorate poor nutrition. However, this strategy ignores the importance of local knowledge and food traditions, most notably by neglecting to acknowledge foraging as a significant source of food. To address this concern, I seek to understand …

Perfect Food: Perspectives On Consumer Perceptions Of Fresh Produce Quality, Caitlin Finlayson

Geography Articles

Over the past century, the global food system has largely shifted from a localized, decentralized agricultural model to more centralized, industrial food production system. Corresponding with this shift was a change in consumer preferences, an expectation for “perfect” fruits and vegetables that has contributed to a significant problem with wasted food. An alternative food system, aimed at providing locally-grown, sustainable produce has countered this model and has sought to reconnect consumers and producers. At the same time, this alternative model still exists within a larger agricultural system dominated by industrial production and standardization. This paper examines how the changes in …

Producing Tradition: International Standards And Development In Jordanian Olive Oil, Brittany Eleanor Cook

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation project examines how value is changed and created through organic certification and the universalizing ideas of capacity building within the olive oil industry in Jordan and how these shifts affect the social and material processes of production. I approach organic olive oil production in Jordan as one method that producers use in accessing markets and capacity building. By shifting from looking strictly at organic certified farms to examining the larger context of capacity building and international standards, I identify how organic is just one strategy in a larger effort to diversify Jordanian agricultural production and to access global …

Zoning And Complementary Incentives To Protect Farmland: A Case For Missoula County, Kaitlin Mccafferty

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Urban sprawl reflects an inefficient use of land that diminishes both rural landscapes and quality of life turning farms, ranches and open space into siloed suburban communities. This results in less walkable cities with more traffic and air pollution, among other negative consequences. Farmland constitutes a particularly important resource that often faces degradation or loss due to sprawl. Higher quality agricultural soils are particularly desirable for development because they are flat and well-drained. Farmland is also important for urban communities concerning food security, environmental health, and economic well being. As American cities continue to grow, farmland around urban areas has …

Reading Between The Vines: Analyzing Climate Change Adaptive Capacity In The Tulbagh Valley Wine Industry, South Africa, Jana Catherine Brady

LSU Master's Theses

There is great concern across the wine industry about the effect climate change will have on wine production and quality. These worries are valid because wine grapes are sensitive to the climatological conditions in which they are grown. However, not all viticultural areas will experience climate change in the same manner and the effects of climate change could vary considerably by region. This thesis examines the potential impact of climate change on the wine industry in the already hot and dry Tulbagh Valley, South Africa. The valley has produced wine since the early 18^th century, but today the valley …

Financial Assessment Of Agricultural Lands At Risk To Coastal Salt Marsh Migration In Relation To Climate Change Induced Sea Level Rise In Dorchester County, Maryland, Jewell Porter

Sustainability and Social Justice

The increasing rate and effects of sea level rise is a major environmental concern in the Chesapeake Bay. This paper evaluates the impacts of rising sea level on coastal salt marshes and the surrounding agricultural lands at risk in Dorchester County, Maryland to build off existing environmental monitoring work performed by NOAA’s Sentinel Site Program. The results of the spatial analysis were used to estimate monetary benefits to incentivize farmers to protect these marshes by making their land available for marsh migration to occur. Looking at three scenarios of sea level rise and marsh migration, grain crops (corn, soybeans, and …

Agro Sí, Mina No: Explaining The Onset Of Protest Surrounding Mining Projects In Peru, Jhader Aguad

Political Science Honors Projects

Peru has witnessed an increase in protest activity over the past decade, seemingly related to natural resource extraction. Yet protests were more prevalent in some provinces than others. What explains this variation? I hypothesize that a mining company's announcement of the creation or advancement of a project has a greater effect on the likelihood and frequency of protest if local people rely more on agriculture. Analyzing an original dataset on Peruvian protests between 2011 and 2015, I find the reverse: Protests are less prevalent when mining projects occur in agricultural provinces, suggesting challenges to collective action in rural areas in …

Kali Gandaki: The Road From Lower Mustang To A Global Food Market, Austin Van Wart

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Development in Nepal continues to be a major issue in both metropolitan and rural areas of the country. Of the many obstacles standing in the way of this objective, one of the most challenging is the mountainous geography that shapes the country’s lands, culture, and people. To overcome this obstacle, Nepal has followed many other developing countries by making rural road development a main priority in hopes of increasing connectivity, travel, trade, education, and accessibility to other benefits. One such example of this is the Kali Gandaki road in Lower Mustang.

The purpose of this research paper is to identify …

Using Gis To Detect Land Use Changes In The Salinas River Valley From 2001 And 2011, Brian Strukan

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) to explore, analyze, and interpret our environment is a relatively new technology with exciting new advances emerging each day. GIS can be used along with satellite imagery to detect changes on Earth’s surface (Delavar, 2015). With the human population growing rapidly, it has become very important to monitor when, where, and how we are changing the planet. Using the theory of land economics, coupled with land classification maps from 2001 and 2011, I will explain how cities are changing in the Salinas River Valley, a prime agricultural zone in central California. Are …

Reconciling Agriculture, Carbon And Biodiversity In A Savannah Transformation Frontier, Lyndon Estes, T. Searchinger, M. Spiegel, D. Tian, S. Sichinga, M. Mwale, L. Kehoe, T. Kuemmerle, A. Berven, N. Chaney, J. Sheffield, E. F. Wood, K. K. Caylor

Geography

Rapidly rising populations and likely increases in incomes in sub-Saharan Africa make tens of millions of hectares of cropland expansion nearly inevitable, even with large increases in crop yields. Much of that expansion is likely to occur in higher rainfall savannas, with substantial costs to biodiversity and carbon storage. Zambia presents an acute example of this challenge, with an expected tripling of population by 2050, good potential to expand maize and soya bean production, and large areas of relatively undisturbed miombo woodland and associated habitat types of high biodiversity value. Here, we present a new model designed to explore the …